News tagged with crime

(Phys.org) —Eyes are said to be a mirror to the soul, but they may also be a mirror to the surrounding world. Researchers have found that our eyes reflect the people we're looking at with high enough resolution ...

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers working at Hanyang University in Korea has developed a new type of polymer that can be used to map sweat droplets in the fingertips—possibly adding a new tool for forensics ...

(Phys.org)—The fun of acronyms is reflected in coming up with CRIME, which stands for Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy. What it translates into, though, is not much fun. Two security researchers have ...

A public summer jobs program for high school students from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Chicago reduced violent crime arrests by 43 percent over a 16-month period, according to a new study from the University ...

(Phys.org) —A team made up of researchers from the U.S. and Australia has put together what they describe as a complete outline of the taphonomic (post-mortem) degradation processes for mammalian hair. ...

Non-biting blow fly Chrysomya megacephala is commonly found in dead bodies and is used in forensic investigations to determine the time of death, referred to as the post mortem interval. A report of synant ...

(Phys.org) —A scientific analysis of 20 million words recorded during 150 years of criminal trials at London's Old Bailey reveals how changes in culture rather than law helped to reduce violent crime, according ...

(Phys.org) —Britain's Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has issued a report critiquing the state of local police readiness regarding cyber-crime in England and Wales. Workers with HMIC have ...

(Phys.org) —Police in Queensland Australia have reported to the media that they now have and are using a device called the Zebedee scanner—it's hand held and can be used to laser scan a crime scene in ...

More punishment does not necessarily lead to less crime, say researchers at ETH Zurich who have been studying the origins of crime with a computer model. In order to fight crime, more attention should be ...

A new way of detecting and visualizing fingerprints from crime scenes using colour-changing fluorescent films could lead to higher confidence identifications from latent (hidden) fingerprints on knives, guns, ...

Crime

Societies define crime as the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority via police power may ultimately prescribe a conviction. While every crime is a violation of the law, not every violation of the law is a crime, for example, breaches of contract and other civil law are offences or infraction.

When society deems informal relationships and sanctions, insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, there may result compulsory systems of social control imposed by a government, or by a sovereign state. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes, and can opt to punish or reform those who do not conform.

Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate prohibited conduct, including rules codified into laws, policing people to ensure they comply with those laws, and other policies and practices designed to prevent crime. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. While incarceration may be of temporary character and therefore aimed at reforming the convict, in some jurisdictions penal codes are written to inflict a permanent harsh punishment either in the form of capital punishment or life without parole.

The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma normally confine their scope to those activities seen as injurious to the general population or to the State, including some that cause serious loss or damage to individuals. The labellers intend to assert the hegemony of a dominant population, or to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behavior and to justify a punishment inflicted by the State (in the event that standard processing tries and convicts an accused person of a crime). Usually, the perpetrator of the crime is a natural person, but crimes may also be committed by legal persons.